February 12th 2008

The principle of linguistic relativity aka "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis". The idea that Language shapes thought and action. Eskimos have more words for snow than people in the tropics (but the idea that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow is a myth). Modern skiers have more words for different types of snow than non-skiers.

But the idea that language shapes thought and action goes much deeper than just words. We also need to look at deeper levels of language, such as the grammar of a language.

For example, some languages have different ways of talking about direction. Experiments have shown that these differences can create different responses to the same task. Here Wesch hands a student three fold out pumpkins, three different colors. And asks him to put them in the same order in the back of the room as they are in the front of the room. But from left, to right? English speakers put them 50/50 in a particular order, Maya speakers go 90% one way and Dutch speakers go 90% the other way.

In the Papua New Guinea fieldwork, Wesch learned about "Relational Space".


Whorf talked about the use of Individual vs. Mass nouns. Individual nouns....Keys, bottles. Then mass nouns....Oil, Milk. In English, Time is objectified as a mass noun. We have to break up time between hours and minutes and seconds, so that we might quantify that which cannot be "quantified"...( a bit complex) We can say, "I was walking and chewing gum." but in Hopi, time is relative. We would say that we chewed gum before we walked.
In Hopi, time is not objectified, it is relative, and there are no verb tenses (this has been debated, but Whorf's analysis is still worth reading).

"Metaphors We Live By" book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980). Examples include our communication as "war". ex. "I already shot down all your points" "You're always attacking my points" "I win." Maybe if we thought of creating rather than destroying in our communication things might be less difficult. Prof. Wesch suggested placing "dance" terms in the place of "war" terms

What is love?
(baby, don't hurt me....don't hurt me....no more.)
-we speak of love in many ways: as a fluid (filled) as a natural force (swept off her feet) etc.

Perhaps we ought to rethink metaphors like, "I'm falling in love," or "I'm falling out of love," and create love instead. Falling in love implies that we have no control over our situation.

Metaphors of love. What is it? How do we perceive it? If we go through life hoping to "fall in love", what does that mean for us? Could we "Create" love, what if we created love everyday instead of hoped that love would stay?

(Article from the Discovery Health, "Why People Fall in Love" )

Relationships might mean more, people would have a vested intrest in making a love last rather than hoping.

let's apply it to ourselves? maybe we can create ourselves?! maybe rather than "find" ourselves?

Let's create ourselves, find ourselves and lose ourselves.
The importance of "self"

• We talk about finding ourselves/importance of finding ourselves.
• We don't find, we "create!"
• 1. find yourself 2. lose yourself 3. create yourself

*Video "In my language" -- On autism and the way autistic people interact with the world. How we limit ourselves on our interaction with the world, with each other; through language. But the narrator feels as if we misunderstanding the true way of living within the world.




Principles of Media Ecology (the study of media environments)

Media: things that carry communication
Principles:
1. Media (meaning ways of communicating) mediates all human relationships
2. All media are biased, like the Mayan speech is biased toward their culture.
3. A change in media can have profound effects on society. We can shift our ways of thinking.

"Seeing like a state"


The first Australian census taking find that language makes things difficult. Nalumin and Kufelmin, meaning "Us" and "them" (to the West). The Australian teams were confused by who was "Us" and "Them"....because everyone was "Us" but they were all "Them". Going from a non-writing world, to a writing world can shift the way people see themselves. People now have names, specific to them, rather than perceived relationships between one another.

They now get state funding, depending on how many members live in a village. People begin to band together, and create nation-state type living groups. People begin to see that living together has positives and negatives. Writing introduces modern ways of keeping records of law and quantities. Witchcraft trials begin to look like the Witch Hunts of early modern Europe.

Our media is us/ing us

it is using us
-it is using us to the extent that we're not aware of it
it is us
- we create all of the media around us
it is us using us.
-important to remember because the media is only as good as we make it.

The more savvy we are, we will be able to create a more meaningful media.

(Prof. Wesch's Vid.)



We have the control. People should own what they create, and create what they own.